"One should doubtless keep an open mind...though open at both ends, like the food pipe, and have a capacity for excretion as well as intake." -- Northrop Frye, 'The Great Code'

Monday, March 16, 2009

Kill the CBC

The National Post has recently run a number of opinion columns debating the state of the CBC. Conrad Black thinks it has a valuable role to play but isn’t fulfilling it. Today, Robert Cushman boosts the ‘CEEB’ and Lorne Gunter, in about half as many words, much more convincingly demolishes it.
Cushman, having been weaned under the influence of the BEEB, has a fondness for government subsidized broadcasting and, amazingly, doesn’t see the CBC’s ideological bias, referring to:

... the supposed "liberal bias" of the CBC.

Lorne Gunter, on the other hand, has no difficulty detecting the CBC’s pronounced leftward list and what to do about it:

The CBC will never be able to exorcize its left-wing missionary zeal -- for global warming, for Islam, for big government, Barack Obama, multiculturalism, public health care, human rights commissions and so on.... If the left-right "balance" at the CBC were as close as 10-1, I would be surprised.... the CBC Web site no better represents a diversity of opinion than the workers' central committee at Karl Marx Widget Factory #6.... So the only thing to do with Mother Corp is to pull down its office buildings and stations and pour salt in their foundations.

Lorne Gunter is absolutely correct. It’s why I no longer tune into CBC TV or radio. My blood pressure is already too high.
I have only one point to add to Mr. Gunter’s. Governments should not be permitted to subsidize ANY enterprise that competes directly with private enterprise; or in other words, private enterprise should not be required to subsidize its competition.

8 comments:

The CBC talks about global warming/climate change because everyone is talking about it. I did watch one episode of the Nature of Things with David Suzuki and his daughter. The were in Europe looking at wind turbines in Denmark and high-speed trains in Spain. The main point that they made was that these made economic sense.

About Islam: I don't know if mentioning anything good about Islam is a left-wing thing. I suppose if one mentioned anything good about Judaism or Christianity that this would be a right-wing thing. One of my progressive blogging friends posted a video segment from a Christian show that had an announcer asking if Jesus was a Liberal or Conservative 2000 years ago. The announcer mentioned that while Jesus did things that were both liberal and conservative, He was a Christian.

Big government: Harper. I rest my quesedilla.

I'm sure if I hear about the demise of the CBC, I'll read about it in the National Post...if it is still around.

The CBC is indeed bloated with too many levels of staffing, and like government it tends to provide long term secure employment for "the right people' - look at how long Suzuki has been there, and really, is he a Nobel Laureate or something?

But you can't fault programs like As It Happens and The 5th Estate, and I just don't see Global or CTV stepping up to the powers that be.I mean, Mike Duffy? Pamela Wallin?Is that the kind of cozy with the PC's that we want in our journalists.

Skinny, The CBC, just like 95%+ of the mainstream media and just about every government on the planet, has signed on to anthropogenic global warming hysteria as its default position. One of the few to offer anything at all skeptical of the hysterics and serious coverage of opposing science is the ‘Comments’ page of the Financial Post. So you do have a point that the CBC is just doing what the rest their media counterparts are doing. However, uncritical acceptance versus skepticism of the AGW doomsday scenario is pretty much a left/right divide. So Gunter is correct in listing it as part of the CBC’s “left wing missionary zeal”.

As for the CBC’s position on radical Islam, which is the real issue, all you have to look at is its coverage of the middle east. It takes a uniformly apologetic stance regarding Palestinian Islamists and their equally Islamist sponsors while relentlessly condemning Israeli policy. This too is a clear point of departure between left and right.

“Big government: Harper. I rest my quesedilla.” I take this as a sign of your approval of Stephen Harper. For me, it’s been a disappointment.

“I'll read about it in the National Post...if it is still around.” I assume that you’d be happy if it weren’t "still around". The CBC and the left in general is fond of touting the virtues of diversity. Gunter is right again in pointing out the reality that at the CBC diversity of opinion is in extremely short supply. Which is pretty sad considering that people of all ideological persuasions are forced to cough up its annual billion dollar subsidy.

Allan, It’s inevitable that a corp the size of the CBC will occasionally come up with a program that isn’t too bad and to please some of the people some of the time. But I found that the risk of being aggravated was too great so I just stopped watching.

I always thought Mike Duffy was fairly balanced. He often took positions that favoured the Liberals, cosying up to the likes of Sheila Copps and waxing enthusiastic over Justin Trudeau. In any case even if he is ideologically sympatico with the right he’s one of very, very few Canadian journalists of that bent. And God forbid that a journalist or two might be right wingers, eh? That would really upset the “balance”.

As for Pamela Wallin, I never thought about her political leanings and was surprised to see her selected as a Tory senator - my preference would have been Don Cherry. But I always thought she exuded a kind of no-nonsense practicality. So I guess that should have been a dead give-away.

More people should be talking about this. We pay around a billion dollars a year to keep this organization running. CTV News Channel does the exact same job. Same stories, same bad journalism, same commercials. The difference? They don't cost us a billion dollars a year. Where's the accountability?!

More people should be talking about this. We pay around a billion dollars a year to keep this organization running. CTV News Channel does the exact same job. Same stories, same bad journalism, same commercials. The difference? They don't cost us a billion dollars a year. Where's the accountability?!

Siemens washing machines come in different types, from freestanding models to built-in or integrated units. Regardless of whether they have to replace. The alternative is a technology that's been around for more years than you might think - tankless water heaters. It can cook healthy and delicious meals within a few minutes.

It is time to axe the CBC, they serve no purpose in the modern world of RSS, blogs and streaming media. I do not need a culture czar making sure I stay within the narrow confines of their making. I do not need them telling me what Canada or being Canadian is and as best as I can surmise; according to them, is an arrogant and smug leftist anti-American.

JR on:

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"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences." -- C. S. Lewis